David Lewis Paget

Black Tide - Poem by David Lewis Paget

I never was one for warningsNever could see the way ahead, I always thought that the dawn would bringGlad tidings to my bed, The sky lit up and the stars went outAs the sun came up each day, And so it would for a million years, Or so I heard them say.

The grass was green and the sky was blueAnd the earth a dirty brown, Nothing was going to change my viewWhile the earth and the stars went round, Each day had followed the day beforeThe months were bundled in years, And if I wished I could draw them outLike the coins in a long-loved purse.

Then you walked onto my palette brush, Were painted into my life, I'd never seen beauty such as yoursThat hadn't been someone's wife, You said your name was OpheliaAnd you took me on for a ride, While friends had muttered aside to me, ‘Beware of the long Black Tide! '

I couldn't see it, I never could, To me you were just a dream, Your star had lit up my neighbourhoodBut nothing was what it seemed, You borrowed money from everyoneWith a smile and a ‘thank you, Jack, 'And spent in rivers that rose in floodBut I had to pay it back.

Your smile was a smile for every manBut the women had seen you through, They caught you out when you held a handBeneath a table or two, The days when you said you'd stayed at homeWith a fever, taken a pill, I swallowed, while you were out to roam, You said you'd been feeling ill.

Then often I saw your eyes were brightThough your speech was a little slurred, I thought you had drunk too much that night, You'd stop, you gave me your word, The laughter grew a bit wilder, andThe parties you went to, gay, I couldn't keep up with that side of you, I had to work by the day.

I felt that a tide was rising, thatWas colouring everything black, The world was a sad and grimmer placeAs you slowly turned your back, I'd fret as the conversation diedAnd you made each lame excuse, As rumours brought the conclusion thatAll that you were was loose.

One night you rode on a Harley, withYour scarf adrift in the breeze, On the back of a bike with CharlieWith your skirt up, showing your knees, You waved and laughed as you passed me byAnd clung to the fellow's back, He took you down to the woodlands thereAlong the old farmer's track.

They phoned the news in the morning, IWas shaken, pale and tense, For he was impaled on the handlebarsAnd you on a barbed wire fence, I knew that you had been lost to meWhen you went on that final ride, And the gorge had risen to choke me likeThe surge of a long Black Tide.

My heart is grey and it's leaden, whileThe land is riven with drought, The sky is grey and forbidding, sinceThe stars in the sky went out, The days still follow the days beforeBut there's darkness here inside, And I ponder more as I walk the shoreOn the number of times you lied!